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Exodus Manuscript Study Wiki
Introduction Ancient manuscripts are very highly prized, due to their rarity and their beautiful artwork. As Voekle writes in the introduction to Mediaeval and Renaissance Manuscripts, ''“the growing awareness of the importance of illuminated manuscripts, both as artistic achievements and cultural documents, has unfortunately also been accompanied by a number of side effects which served to make their acquisition more difficult over the years. Now regarded on a par with painting and sculpture, they command comparable prices on the market. Their increasing scarcity is also an important factor.” (Voekle, 1974, p. XI) Some scholars and collectors appreciate the time and work that went into hand-lettering a script, while others look to ancient manuscripts as the ultimate melding of art and text, as described by Pacht in ''Book Illumination in the Middle Ages: “the book contained a dual interaction between functional structure and external form, its ornamentation...in an age when the most important book, the Book of Books, was the Holy Scripture, the believer, even if illiterate, instinctively felt this deeper meaning in the relationship between the book and its outward form, its artistic embellishment.” (Pacht, 1986, p. 10) Pacht’s discussion of the mediaeval frontispiece ruminates on how “the illuminator’s decorative fantasy took control of the whole page of the book, decked it out with a profusion of ornament...and became a major artistic stimulus” (Pacht, 1986, p. 66) Avrin’s observation of the Ebo Gospels excitedly details “magnificent pages of gold capital letters and Insular-style initials and evangelist portraits in gold-highlighted robes...impressionistic faces reflect nervous energy and the intensity of artistic creation...” (Avrin, 1991, p. 247)'' '' Although it appears easy to assume that all illuminated manuscripts are heavy on ornamentation and illumination, I am not afraid to say that O.T. Exodus (M1091) is not a particularly pretty artifact. It is not illuminated in gold gilt, and it does not have breathtaking illustrations of angels, ladies, saints or intertwining vines and flowers. Neither is it an example of an entire surviving book, such as the Gutenberg Bible or a book of hours. It is one side of a leaf in which several hands have crammed notes between lines and in the margins. In contrast to the sparse decoration, the text of the fragment is very visual. Exodus 28, the passage copied, describes garments and ornaments that Jewish priests were to wear. While the text of the passage lends itself to many opportunities for lavish illustration, it is evident that the scribes prioritized the vellum’s empty margins to be used for commentary from Bede the Venerable, not visual aids. During the course of this research project, I made several incorrect assumptions that led to a greater understanding of the work. My main mistake was the assumption that Bede wrote the manuscript himself, but the discrepancy in dates upon researching the Anglo-Saxon saint soon revealed that Bede’s commentary in this piece comes from his work De Tabernaculo et Vasis et Eius ac Vestibus Sacerdotum ''(Of the Tabernacle and its Vessels, and the Garments of the Priests), which was written around 721. This manuscript fragment dates to France circa 1175, so it is clear that the scribes who created the ''Exodus ''manuscript had access to a well preserved copy of Bede’s original commentary. Given that the manuscript was created four hundred years after the scholar’s death, the monastery that added the annotations must have held his writings in the highest of esteem. My second incorrect assumption was that the Cecil H. Green Library at Stanford University, which held the manuscript, operated on the same terms as the archival library at San Jose State University. Instead, I was faced with a far more formal page request system and more strict digital reproduction policy than the one I was accustomed to. Visiting the manuscript required two trips, the second of which required that I bring a digital camera instead of using my smartphone to take pictures. I also quickly learned that I could not access the campus Wi-Fi as a non-Stanford student, which led to me learning a great deal about my skills in time management. The second trip also revealed that the manuscript had writing and embellishment on both sides of the leaf, yet I was only able to look at one side as the fragment had been taped into an acid-free matboard. I must stress that the staff of the Cecil H. Green Library were never less than extremely helpful and accomodating to me as far as their policies would go, and that I am grateful for their help and assistance with this research project. I chose to research this manuscript fragment for several reasons. The first was that I sought to explore an archival repository out of my comfort zone, at Stanford University nearby in Palo Alto. I could have chosen an illuminated manuscript fragment from the archives at San Jose State University, where I work as a student assistant, but my personal goal for this project was to expand my knowledge of archival practices in an academic library much larger than that which I am familiar with. From a research perspective, I was interested in studying a manuscript that had been annotated with text from a period considered ancient when the copy was completed in the 12th century. Biblical commentary remains a common theological literature today, as annotated Bibles full of footnotes and interpretations can be found on the shelves of any christian bookstore. McKitterick describes the relationship that the Carolingian Franks had between scripture and commentary as “part of a past that the Franks had assimilated to themselves, part of the Frankish sense of identity...indeed a textual community in relation to the bible, but also a textual community in terms of their intellectual and textual inheritance” (McKitterick, 2004, p. 221) Bede held a particular reverence to Carolingian theologians, as they were strongly interested in defining the age of earth and the date of the birth of Christ (known as the Incarnation). Bede’s calculations led to the establishment of time measured before christ and after christ, the ''Anno Domini (AD) which is still in use by much of the world today (McKitterick, 2004, p. 92). While the Frankish empire had collapsed by the time of the manuscript’s creation in the 12th century, the Carolingian influence was still strong enough to warrant Bede as an important scholar and contributor to the field of biblical commentary. It is gratifying to know that even in an age steeped in influence from the church as a ruling class, monks still looked to sources for a better understanding of the scriptures. Historical Context Bede's World (7th Century Northumbria) 7th century England was a world of shifting identities and loyalties. “Had he been born half a century earlier, Bede might well have found himself involved directly in some of the many wars arising from the attempts of ambitious rulers to extend their boundaries...and had he died a little more than half a century later, he would have witnessed the first Viking attack on his own monastery” (Blair, 1990, p. 6) It appears that Bede lived in an era of relative peace and stability, protected from raids by the remote location of his abbey. Northumbria, which presently consists of southern Scotland and northern England, possessed a rocky coast that provided a natural defense against invaders from across the sea. Politically, the feuding clans of Picts and Scots were “brought temporarily into peaceful relationships with one another at this time by intermarriage, and more important, Oswald and several of his noblemen received baptism from the Scots...this event proved to be of such momentous significance for the English church” (Blair, 1990, p. 102) The reigns of Aethelfrith and his successor Oswald brought monetary support to the church, allowing Bede’s childhood monastery to expand into a multi-building complex. Oswald also established the island of Lindisfarne as the first seat of the Holy See, appointing bishops to spread the word of English Christianity across the kingdom (Blair, 1990, p. 104) Even with the access to a varied diet that the monastery provided, the church was crowded and hygiene practices were not standard. A common tale of Bede’s life is that the entire choir of his church and nearly all of the higher offices of the monastery was decimated by the yellow plague, leaving young Bede and few other survivors (Hardin Brown, 2009, p. 7, Blair, 1990, 117-118, Duckett, 1948, p. 234). The rate at which the disease was spread is thought to be due to close hand and mouth contact between the victims, as monks traditionally gave to a sick brother “a farewell kiss peace as they filed before him, weeping for their father whom they were to see no more” (Duckett, 1948, p. 234) The lifetime expectancy was to the mid thirties, although certainly this was not always true when we consider that Bede died at around the age of sixty (University of Glasgow, 2005) although this may well have been due to the unusually peaceful and short-lived era of his time. Bede’s world, although greatly expanded through the power of reading and education, was considerably quite small when one considers that it is mostly agreed on that he never left Northumbria. Scribe's World (12th Century France) Author and Scribe Bede the Venerable Carolingian Monk Incipit Explicit Colophon Size Material Collation The section quoted from Exodus has the largest text, but has the fewest words on the page by far. The eye sees it first, as it was likely intended, due to its placement in the center-right of the page. The large text also is the only column to have the ornamentation of colored initials on each phrase, which indicates that it is the holy scripture; the lack of ornament or embellishment on the smaller text around it indicates that it comes from a more humble inspiration, the pen of the scholar. The text is laid out into a series of four vertical columns, with a lengthy paragraph of horizontal text to the bottom right. The top right column wraps around a short column next to the Exodus text column and finishes with a short few lines of even smaller text below, done in a lighter hand than the rest of the script. Bede’s commentary makes up the rest of the columns that are not the scripture text, with small text written in between the lines of the scripture in an undecorated style. Script The script is Carolingian Minuscule, which was in use throughout Europe from 800-1200 and was later replaced by Gothic script. Although the first letter of each phrase in the biblical part of the text is not embellished with color, the elongated ascenders that drift to the right above the rest of the words are distinct enough to be regarded as their own kind of embellishment. That the commentary is small, tidy and without large rounded curves dates it to the late 11th century (Tillotson, 2005). Below the first column is a punctuation mark similar to a modern division symbol (÷), and along the right side of the manuscript is a light column of small diagonal slashes. The (÷) sign is likely an obelos, which was used to indicate a textual error or suggest a revision (Haugen, 2011). The slashes on the far right margin are probably indicators of an editor going through the text line by line. Different Hands Ink Rubrication Decoration Illumination/Painting Summary References Category:Browse